


Arya Stark Has a Long, Messy History with White Dresses

by secretschuylersister



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:56:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretschuylersister/pseuds/secretschuylersister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A (Modern AU) Story in Three Parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arya Stark Has a Long, Messy History with White Dresses

I.   
Arya Stark was unamused.  
  
She scowled at herself in the old full length mirror in her parents’ bedroom as her mother finished harnessing her into a short, frilly white dress. After what felt like an eternity (but was probably only a few moments), she was finally presentable. Well, as presentable as she was going to get.   
  
Her mother gazed at their reflection and let out a happy sigh, running her hands over Arya’s freshly smoothed hair.  
  
“Arya, you look just beautiful,” her mother breathed out, a smile stretching across her face, “my baby’s first communion.” Arya’s scowl only deepened.  
  
“I look silly. Can’t I just stay home? I took the classes. I didn’t agree to a dress.”  
  
“It will be over before you know it and then we’ll be back home for your party. The whole family will be here!”  
  
“Oh fantastic,” Arya thought to herself, “a stuffy party full of relatives and my parents’ friends and hours more in this stupid, stupid dress.” To say that out-loud would only serve to irritate her mother so she just smiled tightly and headed downstairs where her siblings and father were waiting to head out.  
  
The ceremony was about as long and boring as she expected, but she was able to blend in with the other girls in their own white dresses so she felt like less of an idiot. There was a close call when she stumbled over her own feet near the Eucharist table but she righted herself before the wine went flying.   
  
After having her picture taken a thousand times, her mother kept her word and the party in Arya’s honor was in full swing. As soon they could manage it without being missed, Arya’s brothers snuck her outside to finally have a little fun. The son of a family friend had joined them and soon they were all running around their family’s sprawling backyard. Arya hadn’t even realized the state she was in until she heard her mother’s voice reach a pitch she was surprised she was even capable of hearing.  
  
“Arya! Your dress is destroyed!”   
  
And destroyed it was. The once pure white gown fit for a little girl on her communion day was now caked in mud and barely fit to be a rag.  
  
Arya winced, waiting for more shouting and the grounding of a lifetime that was sure to ensue.   
  
Her mother could only shrug and in a tired, resigned voice say that at least she waited until they were out of the church.   
  
II.   
She didn’t know how it happened, but Arya Stark somehow found herself being shoved into another white dress in front of that full length mirror. She was seventeen now, and the time for short, frilly dresses had come and gone and so now she was in something so tight and slinky she hardly recognized herself.  
  
“Sansa, this is really unfair. I lost the bet and now I’m going to my stupid junior prom. I don’t recall this insane gown being part of the deal.”  
  
“Well, you should have considered the bigger picture when you thought you were stronger than I was. I would have lifted a bus over my head if it meant getting you to prom.”  
  
Arya had bet her sister that she could carry more of their toddler cousins at once than Sansa could and had lost miserably. It wasn’t a safe bet (both for the toddlers’ safety or for Arya’s chances of winning) but let’s face it, Sansa was scrawny. How could she have known that the promise of playing dress up with Arya would transform her skinny sister into some sort of She-Hulk.   
  
Her junior prom had fallen on her parent’s wedding anniversary and not even that could get her out of it. What does family tradition matter when everyone can laugh at an all dolled up Arya? Honestly.   
  
“You look stunning. More gorgeous than I’ve ever seen you. Now get downstairs to your date and slap on a smile,” Sansa smirked as she swatted Arya on the behind and skipped out of the room.  
  
Arya was never one to back out of a bet, and she had promised this Edric kid to be his date anyway, so she put on a brave face and headed downstairs. Her entire family (plus Gendry, an old family friend who was an increasingly common presence in her house) were waiting to see her off and generally humiliate her. She looked at their self-satisfied grins and rolled her eyes until they landed on Gendry, who looked curiously serious.   
  
As she and Edric were having about eight thousand of the same photos taken by her parents, she overheard Gendry murmuring to Jon about Arya’s dress and “shouldn’t she maybe have a shawl?”  
  
That was the last straw for Arya. She grabbed Edric’s arm, said goodbye to her family and hauled ass out of the door.  
  
The elder three Stark siblings (and Gendry, because of course Gendry) promised their parents to hang out around the house and make sure Arya got home on time while they were out for the evening for their anniversary. Robb, Jon, Sansa and Gendry were expecting to be waiting around until midnight or so. What they weren’t expecting was Arya to race back into the house no more than two hours after she left, the front of her dress spotted with washed out red stains.  
  
Arya ignored all their attempts to grab her attention and stormed right up into her room where she promptly locked them out. After awhile, they realized that banging on her door was getting them nowhere and decided to give her some space. Once the Starks wandered into their own rooms, Gendry softly knocked and asked if he could come in.  
To his surprise, Arya threw the door open and dragged him inside.  
  
“WHAT?!”  
  
“What do you mean “what?”,” Gendry sputtered, “you come storming in like a madwoman who looks like she just stabbed someone and you’re asking ME questions?”  
  
“I didn’t stab anyone, you idiot. Just go home,” Arya shouted as she tried to shove Gendry out of her room.  
  
He stood his ground and told her he wasn’t moving an inch until she told him what the fuck had gone on at that dance.  
  
“If that asshole put his hands on you, I swear I’ll kill-“  
  
“No! Some stupid girl called Sansa a slut, okay? She was saying some really nasty stuff about her so I poured a bowl of punch over her head and fucking left. Jesus.”  
  
Gendry couldn’t keep the half-smile off his face.  
  
“That was…nice.”  
  
“Yeah, well, she’s my sister. Some idiot girl thought she could run off at the mouth about her and obviously learned that she was fucking wrong.”  
  
Arya sighed and threw herself across her bed. Gendry sat in the desk chair and cracked a joke about her ruining another perfectly good dress to make her smile.  
  
Unbeknownst to either of them, a certain red-headed sister was listening quietly outside the door with tears welled up in her eyes. She knows that they’ll never speak of it, her sister isn’t one for emotional moments, but Sansa is sure she’s never loved anyone so much.  
  
III.   
Arya Stark had never felt more lovely.  
  
Here she was in another white dress and she would be in yet another one tomorrow, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. Nobody was dressing her this time, it was just her and the full length mirror she had snagged from her parents’ house when she moved out last year. She smoothed out the knee-length skirt of the vintage dress she had found and walked into her living room where her groom was waiting for her in a shirt and tie.  
  
No matter how long they were together, Arya wasn’t sure that she would ever get used to the way Gendry looked at her.  
  
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered in her ear as he wrapped his arms around her.  
She smiled at him and buried her head in his chest for a moment before stepping back and grabbing his hand.  
  
“Ready to do this?”  
  
“So ready.”  
  
They walked hand in hand outside their apartment building where Jon was waiting to pick them up and drive them to Arya’s childhood home. When Gendry proposed, they had decided that their wedding was going to be a small, intimate affair. Of course, with families like the Starks and the Baratheons, that wasn’t to be. Before she knew it, the wedding had spiraled out of her hands and became a spectacle with a life of it’s own.   
  
After a particularly stressful day of wedding planning, Gendry returned home from work to see Arya in tears. Arya crying happened, well, never and Gendry knew that he didn’t want this to be the start of their lives together. An idea occurred to him and he set the plan in motion immediately.  
  
Their parents would get the lavish affair that they wanted, but Arya and Gendry would become a family the right way. He knew that there was no place on earth that Arya loved more than the massive, ancient property she grew up on. That was where they met and fell in love and that was where they would be married. He had Jon get ordained to marry them and enlisted Sansa to decorate an area deep in the family’s woods where the tiny, secret ceremony would be held. Once it was set it stone, he shared his plan with Arya who (for the second time in as many days) burst into tears. She threw her arms around him and then ran out the door to find something less ostentatious than the gown her mother picked out to be married in.  
  
And the soft, vintage lace dress she found that felt more like herself than any dress she had ever worn was what she would be wearing when the man she loved became her husband.   
  
Standing in the woods at dusk surrounded by her siblings, Arya and Gendry joined their lives together.  As the sun set, she and her husband roamed around the woods where Arya grew to be who she was and she gave no thought to her perfect dress getting dirty.  
  
Tomorrow was the day for pretend perfection. Today? Today was theirs.


End file.
